$ hdparm -Tt /dev/hda
Useful rguments to hdparm are
$ hdparm -c3 -m32 /dev/hda
This enables (E)IDE 32-bit I/O support and sector count for multiple sector I/O.
The entries in /etc/hdparm.conf are:
/etc/hdparm.conf
io32_support = 3 mult_sect_io = 32